Systems and methods for processing pharmacy data are known in the art. Most of these systems and methods are used to obtain authorization of charges for pharmaceutical prescriptions, such as by contacting a claims approval agency to determine whether a patient has insurance and what the patient should be charged in accordance with the patient's insurance policy. In particular, these systems can be designed to generate prescription data and prescription authorization data in compliance with National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP) standards, such as the Telecommunication Standard Specification Version 5 Release 1 dated Sep. 1999, the Telecommunication Standard Implementation Guide Version 5 Release 1 dated Jun. 2000, the Data Dictionary dated September 1999, or other NCPDP standards, each of which are hereby incorporated by reference for all purposes.
While such systems and methods are useful, there are a large number of proprietary systems that are not readily integrated. Thus, in order to obtain information about the types of pharmaceutical compounds that are being dispensed by a large number of pharmacies, it would be necessary to develop and implement interfaces with a large number of proprietary systems.